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They get more ad revenue from targeted ads and revolving ad boxes -- neither of which you can do in print. So it's not got anything to do with "the way of the future" or "better for our readers"; it's the almighty buck.

But that just goes to show how internet ad giants have conned businesses into spending an order of magnitude more on advertising. I still haven't seen any figures from outside google or fb that clearly demonstrate that all this extra spending on advertising provides any increase in ROI whatsoever.

Personally, I think MSDN is making a mistake. They're moving from a market where they're one of the few big players into a market where there are a lot of big players.

I thought they also shut down the subscriber downloads, so I guess all that’s left is your Azure monthly credit?

Subscriber downloads are still there. The "Azure monthly credit" on the other hand is worthless. I tried to use it last year at one point and every attempt led to a prompt for a pay plan of one sort or another.